


Some People Do Not Want To Be Saved

by Nihonkikuasa211



Category: Code Black (TV)
Genre: Angst, Discussions of DNR, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Established Relationship, F/M, Spoilers, Tag to 1x14, Unprofessionalism
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-01-29
Updated: 2016-01-29
Packaged: 2018-05-16 23:10:54
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,100
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5844589
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Nihonkikuasa211/pseuds/Nihonkikuasa211
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>“You have to learn…that there are people that we cannot save, Christa. There are people who do not want to be saved.” Neal and Christa have a deep conversation at the end of the episode.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Some People Do Not Want To Be Saved

**Author's Note:**

> This happens at the end of episode fifteen, if I am correct. (For spoiler reasons.) I was frankly shocked and dismayed of how some of the fandom of Code Black were treating Christa because of how she acted in this past episode. I agree that she was unprofessional - but she was acting human. I hope this story explains my frustration with the fandom as of this moment. And, happiness of Neal and Christa being together.

_Some People Do Not Want To Be Saved_

 

           

“I don’t blame you if you are angry with me,”

Christa knew now that what she did was wrong. When she had done CRP on a man named Logan, the story that she heard in her mind over and over again, she had only felt. The resident should have respected the DNR, allowed the tormented man to die in peace where his demons couldn’t follow. She should have acted as the professional she was, not with the emotion that she had. The blond simply couldn’t see another person dying. Another person, who she believed, gave up without a fight. Who had so much to live for. Christa remembered of how Neal had told her to stop, his voice sharp for the first time and his eyes boring into her own. It was then, that Christa understood what she had done.

 _“I’m sorry,”_ she had whispered. _“I’m sorry.”_

Her actions – trying to save a man who did not want to be saved – burned in her mind, and the blond swallowed thickly, shame coursing down her throat. _I was supposed to...comfort the wife who lost her husband. I wasn’t right, what I did. I let my emotions and personal feelings overpower me._

Christa sighed deeply after she said those words to the footsteps she recognized as belonging to Neal. He had tried to find her after the disaster and tragedy that she had found when the resident had appeared in the locker room. The blond still remembered the blood trailing from Dr. Perello, seeing her clothes stained with the red liquid. Her fingers twitching slightly as Christa gasped and screamed for help. Her thoughts on what happened hours before retreated as she saw Neal move across from her, his face hidden, as Christa continued to grieve from the decision that she had made.

“I’m not angry, Christa.”

The words were like a knife wound to the stomach, and the blond resident turned to find the older doctor looking at her with somber empathy. His dark eyes appeared darker than normal, and Christa looked into his eyes as she said that he should.

“Why?” he asked.

“Because...I was unprofessional. I disobeyed a DNR. That is not what we are supposed to do, Neal.” At the sound of his name, Christa’s voice slightly cracked. The memory of pushing against the patient’s chest remained in her mind. “Doctors...are not supposed to act intuitive to their emotions.”

During her talk, Neal was silent. Christa had almost half-expected him to reprimand her or talk to her slowly about what was professional and what was no professional. The attending didn’t say a word as Christa’s voice faded, the memory of Logan, who had jumped off a four-story building to die but failed to remained there, haunting. _“What if...I know what it’s been like?”_ An old man dying of cancer with dementia had been the case in which Christa had provided comfort for Jeremy, the old man’s young son who had to make a devastating decision. _“Not a day goes by when I regret... that I made my son work too hard to die.”_ Choosing to allow someone to die was an agonizing decision. It was not one that Christa took lightly, and yet...she had believed that Logan had so much to live for. Schizophrenia was treatable, and he could live a happy life with his wife by his side without any pain or tears. He was not dying. Logan had just chose to. The blond resident’s emotions had clouded her judgement. _Neal was right,_ the female doctor thought with sorrow. _Mama was right…and Dr. Perello was right. And I –_

“What I respect about you, Christa, if of how you care greatly about your patients.” Christa turned, and found that Neal was approaching her. His slightly taller frame stood in front of hers, and she could see that it was true. He was not angry with her. “Too much, perhaps. I still remember one of the first cases we took together, and you pleaded with me to operate on a woman to save her ovary that could give her a child, the last memory of the man she loved.” Christa remembered too. The blond resident had then too had her emotions clouding her judgement, speaking to the then-mentor about the patient waiting for the only chance of hope she had – telling him details about the patient as if she knew her. “And what you did today, Christa...it was unprofessional.” The blond resident risked a glance at the attending, and the dark-haired doctor’s expression slightly softened.

“But it means that you are human.”

“Human doesn’t make what I did as the correct way to accept the patient’s death,” Christa argued, She could see Neal struggling within himself, perhaps what to say or do as guilt built in her blue eyes. Finally, the male doctor’s mouth opened, and he spoke carefully with care.

“Sometimes it is not easy to follow your head instead of your heart. Sometimes the heart saves us, but it can also cloud your ability to work in chaos that we work in. I would rather you retain your emotions than discard them, Christa.” Neal’s voice was gentle, and Christa could feel her throat tighten at the sound of gentleness coming from him. “All of us are human, and none of us can live without emotions.” The attending softly cradled Christa’s hand in his own, his thumb stroking her fingers tenderly as he did that morning. “None of us can live without sadness and despair…or fear. It never goes away.”

“I just have to be better at handling it,” Christa stated to him.

Neal didn’t respond at first. For a moment, a faraway look appeared in his eyes, and the doctor swallowed before speaking, ever so slowly. “You have to learn…that there are people that we cannot save, Christa. There are people who do not want to be saved.”

The resident beside him was silent. She had listened deeply to Neal’s words, and thought of what had caused her to become a doctor. Her sweet little boy had died in her arms, and she was determined that she would never feel the same helplessness and grief as she did at that moment. _I wanted to save people. I didn’t want them...to feel the same despair that I experienced. I wanted to make certain that they would live, and I would be able to see their smiles._ And yet, she had met a man who had felt more despair than she had experienced. Christa had wanted him to live, to live and live a life that she was arrogantly certain that he would.

“How do you deal with it?” she asked.

“It took me years to accept that I could not save every patient that came into the ER,” Neal replied. He continued to stroke her fingers, her hand now reaching instinctively to his touch. “I still remember as a second year resident when Leanne pulled me aside and told me that not everyone that comes into Angles comes to be saved. Sometimes they come to die; from suicide; from a stage of cancer that cannot be treated; or those who do not take treatment altogether and choose to die with dignity.” Neal cleared his throat, his voice quieter as he told Christa the story coming from his lips. “There was a young girl who came into Angles, in the year Leanne pulled me aside. She was young, no more than twenty, and yet she had refused treatment for a cancer that could have been defeated with chemotherapy and radiation. She was in so much pain...and yet she kept refusing to take chemotherapy. I was so _angry_ , and asked her outright why she was trying to kill herself.”

“I still remember of how she looked at me. It was as if she had seen the expression and thoughts before, and smiled at me.” Neal sighed and spoke slightly louder as he recounted the patient that had followed him beyond her death. Christa had heard of how in a doctor’s career, this often happened. Patients that you could not save or the memories of the patient’s last moments and their memories haunted many in the medical field. _Kelly..._ the resident thought. She too had a patient that would haunt her.

“She told me, “‘I want to live a life without the artificial pain going through my body, doctor. I would rather spend my time truly living and loving my world around me instead of lying in a hospital room with poison draining me of life. I have lived a good and happy twenty years on this world, and I want nothing more. I would be dead before my body actually died if I decided to be afraid of death.’” I asked her if she was lonely at the thought of dying alone, and I remember...of how she had laughed and said that she wasn’t alone. “‘Alone is different from lonely, doctor. I am not alone because I am happy that I have the memories of people that I love in my heart. Lonely...is when you are in solitude, drowning in your own lack of love for yourself and for the world around you. Besides, you will be here with me when I die.’” I did not have the experience or acceptance that I do now when she died. I can still remember looking at the flat line, staring at the young girl with so much...brilliance lying dead, her face looking so peaceful, her hazel eyes never to open again. Her laughter never to be heard by anyone, except in memories.”

“I could not understand how we could allow her, or anyone, to die.” Neal looked at Christa, and she could almost imagine his younger self’s devastation at the thought of a young girl who had accepted death from an early age, when so many people would be so deathly afraid. The blond resident could understand where Neal was taking this, and she lightly unclasped his hands from her own and cupped his face with her hands as he leaned towards her. “I tried to resuscitate her despite the DNR order. Like you Christa, I could not accept that there are some people who don’t want to be saved.” The static grief stemming from the event years ago made Neal clench his hands. “I had never been lectured so much by Leanne in my life. I almost went home, in fact. I was convinced that whatever notions I had of emergency medicine, that they were wrong. _I_ was wrong.” A deep sigh penetrated from deep in his chest, and Christa could feel their chests touch as Neal moved instinctively closer. “But then...Leanne told me that you cannot save everyone, and not everyone wants to be saved.”

“What was her name?” Christa asked faintly as Neal faintly traced Christa’s left hand with his thumb.

“Evangeline.” The name came out as a whisper. “Evangeline Engel.”

Together, the both of them were motionless. Christa’s hands continued to cup Neal’s face as she thought of what Neal had told her about being human, and acceptance. _“Some people do not want to be saved.”_

“You will continue to make mistakes, Christa,” Neal stated lowly. “ _I_ will continue to make mistakes –”

“Neal, I’ve never seen you make a mistake in the months I’ve been here,” Christa protested as the doctor suddenly shook his head and gave her a pointed look.

“You called me by my name when I trying to bring to life a woman who was beyond saving. Your voice...your very being...on that day saved me.” A tender look, full of so much love that Christa could only stare with the only sound being her heartbeat. “And when I make a mistake again, I know now,” he stated softly, pressing their foreheads together, “that I will have you to hold me and stand by my side when I fall and falter.” Their breaths even out, and Christa wondered if the love pouring out of Neal’s eyes was identical to her own. “For you, I will be there for you. Always.”

Their lips connected, soothing with the comfort that both of them had with one another and the gentle feeling that Christa now felt – hearing Neal’s comforting words in her mind, echoing slowly – as she continued to kiss the man that had been able to soothe her heart when nothing else could.

_“There are people who do not want to be saved.”_

**Author's Note:**

> I cannot believe there are only four episodes left. I feel so empty inside.


End file.
